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evening among the mountains of our island. We all see it, and yon
would too, if you had your sight.’
“A fisherman, who also sat there, said to the lame man, ‘It
is very evident that you have never been outside your island.
If you weren’t a cripple, you would have been to sea, and known
that the sun does not go down among the mountains on our
island, but just as it rises out of the sea in the morning, so it
goes down into the sea every night. I am telling the truth, for
I see it with my own eyes every day.’
“An Indian heard him. ‘It amazes me,’ he said, ‘how a
sensible man can talk such rubbish. How can a fireball
possibly sink into the sea and not be quenched? The sun is truly
no fireball—the sun is a god, and that god is called Diva. The
god drives in a chariot round the golden mountain Speruvia.
Sometimes it happens that the fierce serpents Ragn and Keta
attack Diva and swallow him, and then it gets dark. But our
priests pray that the god may be delivered, and then he is set
free. Only ignorant men like you, who have never been out of
it, could imagine that the sun shines only on your island.’
“A captain of an Egyptian vessel, who chanced to be there,
struck in. ‘Nay,’ he said, ‘that, too, is folly. The sun is
no god, and he does not only go round India and that golden
mountain of yours. I have sailed far and wide, both in the
Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf; I have also been to Madagascar
and the Phillipine Islands, and the sun shines on all lands, and
not India only. He does not go round any particular mountain,
but rises by the Japan Isles—that is just the reason they
are called Japan, because in their language it means “The
Sun’s Birth”—and sets far away in the West, beyond the
British Isles. I know this, because I have seen it myself, and
have heard a great deal about it from my grandfather, and my
grandfather sailed to the world’s end.’
“He would have gone on talking, but, an English sailor from
our ship interrupted him.
“‘There is no country where they know so much about the
sun’s course as in England. The sun, as we all know quite
well in England, doesn’t stop anywhere, but keeps on going
round the world.’ But not knowing how to explain it quite
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